“He who is not satisfied with a little, is satisfied with nothing.”
Epicurus · Vatican Sayings
quolira
quolira.com
Not what we have but what we enjoy, constitutes our abundance.
About this quote
Meaning
This quote draws a clear line between possession and experience. Having a great deal means little if none of it is genuinely enjoyed, while someone with modest resources who takes real pleasure in what they have lives in a state of true abundance. The point is not that material things are worthless, but that abundance is ultimately a felt quality of life rather than a measurable quantity of belongings or wealth.
Why it resonates
This idea speaks directly to a tension that many people feel in modern life, where accumulating more is treated as the obvious path to satisfaction, yet the satisfaction itself often fails to arrive. The quote invites a shift in attention from acquiring to appreciating. It echoes a broader psychological truth that people tend to adapt quickly to new possessions and circumstances, meaning that enjoyment depends far more on awareness and gratitude than on the size of what one owns.
How to use it
This line works well as a personal reminder when you notice yourself focused on what is missing rather than what is present. It can be kept somewhere visible as a daily prompt to pause and notice the pleasures already available to you. It also makes a thoughtful starting point for a journal entry, a conversation about values, or a reflection on what a genuinely good day actually looks and feels like in your own life.
Up next
“Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.”
Epicurus
“Death is nothing to us, since when we are, death has not come, and when death has come, we are not.”
Epicurus · Letter to Menoeceus
“Enlightenment ideals are timeless, but their realization at any moment is the strenuous achievement of nations.”
Steven Pinker · Enlightenment Now, 2018
“Progress consists of deploying knowledge to allow all of humankind to flourish in the same way that each of us seeks to flourish.”
Steven Pinker · Enlightenment Now, 2018
“Pessimism is so reflexively expected of an intellectual that the way to flaunt your sophistication is to wear a long face.”
Steven Pinker · Enlightenment Now, 2018
“Knowledge is growing exponentially; knowledge needed to fend off our problems is growing faster than the problems.”
Steven Pinker · Enlightenment Now, 2018
“Poverty has a thousand causes, but wealth has only one.”
Steven Pinker · Enlightenment Now, 2018
“The decline of violence may be the most significant and least appreciated development in the history of our species.”
Steven Pinker · The Better Angels of Our Nature, 2011
“As the world has gotten more rational, it has gotten less cruel.”
Steven Pinker · The Better Angels of Our Nature, 2011
“Bad things can happen quickly, but good things aren't built in a day, and as they unfold, they will be out of sync with the news cycle.”
Steven Pinker · Enlightenment Now, 2018
“We will never have a perfect world, and it would be dangerous to seek one. But there is no limit to the betterments we can attain if we continue to apply knowledge to enhance human flourishing.”
Steven Pinker · Enlightenment Now, 2018
